# Blaxel - First marketing hire reporting to the CEO; owned strategy and budget, directed agencies - Paid-ad conversions up 46% on 36% less spend versus the prior 30 days - Contributed to two successive doublings of seven-figure ARR in the first three months ## June 2026 I joined Blaxel as its first marketing hire, reporting to the CEO. Blaxel builds infrastructure for autonomous agents: the compute, storage and networking behind software that runs code, uses tools and carries work from one task to the next. My remit was growth and revenue. I owned the marketing strategy and budget, directed agencies, and worked across paid acquisition, product marketing, customer proof and brand. I also wrote the technical stories, built their companion examples and developed tools for the marketing work itself. For a usage-based product, getting someone to sign up is a beginning. The next question is whether they can put the infrastructure to work. That connected the parts of the job: make the product understandable, give developers something useful to try, and measure what happened after they arrived. ![Cover of Blaxel's 2026 brand book, with the new wordmark over orange and teal graphic art.](/images/writing/blaxel/brand-book-cover.png) The 2026 brand book, part of the rebrand direction I led. The [Positioning & Brand](/work/blaxel/blaxel-positioning-and-brand) page shows the identity system and product creative. ![Blaxel brand-book page 16, showing billboard and street-display concepts using the orange and teal identity.](/images/writing/blaxel/brand-outdoor-media.jpg) Outdoor media concepts from page 16 of the brand book, showing the identity on a billboard and street display. [View the spread at full size.](/images/writing/blaxel/brand-outdoor-media.jpg) ## Give people a way to inspect the claim The customer-story work made the product concrete. I wrote about what customers were building, where Blaxel fit into their architecture, and what the customer still owned. Where a working example helped explain the mechanism, I paired the story with a GitHub cookbook. A developer could read about persistent files, then inspect an example that deleted a sandbox and recovered the files in a new one. They could read about code generation, then follow the build, check and repair cycle in a working environment. The code gave the writing something to stand on. I brought that same specificity to positioning and launches. I chose and led the rebrand direction, wrote product-positioning articles and made paid creative that explained the infrastructure through the work an agent does. For the OpenAI Agents API launch, I wrote a draft article and supporting social copy, with the destination, visual and approval requirements defined for each piece. ## Connect acquisition to what happens next I owned paid acquisition across Google, LinkedIn, X and ChatGPT Ads. The measurement work connected ad delivery with product activity and payment outcomes, while keeping each metric's attribution clear. I also built AI-agent workflows for recurring marketing reviews. Paid media review moved from a monthly cadence to a daily one, with conversion data synthesized into proposed changes for human approval. Market research and answer-engine citation analysis had their own evidence and review workflows. ## Results The paid program delivered **46% more paid-ad conversions on 36% less spend**, with **cost per paid-ad conversion down 56%**, versus the prior 30 days. Over the same period, **product signups increased 37%** and **workspace-created activity increased 41%**. Those are overall product measures; the paid results don't establish paid attribution for them. In my first three months, the broader growth work **contributed to two successive doublings of seven-figure ARR**. That was a company result, supported by the work across acquisition, technical content, customer proof and brand. ## Explore the work - [Paid Growth & Measurement](/work/blaxel/blaxel-paid-growth-and-measurement): the paid results, measurement boundaries and review cadence. - [Customer Stories & Cookbooks](/work/blaxel/blaxel-customer-stories-and-cookbooks): technical writing paired with examples a developer can inspect and run. - [Positioning & Brand](/work/blaxel/blaxel-positioning-and-brand): rebrand direction, published writing and the product story in paid creative. - [Product Launches](/work/blaxel/blaxel-product-launches): the OpenAI Agents API launch draft, channel adaptations and release preparation. - [AI Marketing Systems](/work/blaxel/blaxel-ai-marketing-systems): the tools I built for paid review, market research, citation analysis and shared context. ## Questions this page answers ### What did Michael Preuss do at Blaxel? I joined Blaxel in June 2026 as the first marketing hire, reporting to the CEO as Head of Growth & Marketing. I owned strategy and budget, directed agencies, and worked across paid acquisition, product marketing, customer proof, brand and launches. I also built companion cookbooks and tools for recurring marketing work. ### What results did Michael Preuss's work at Blaxel support? At Blaxel, paid-ad conversions increased 46% on 36% less spend, and cost per paid-ad conversion fell 56%, versus the prior 30 days. Overall product signups increased 37% and workspace-created activity increased 41% over the same period. The broader growth work contributed to two successive doublings of seven-figure ARR in my first three months. The product activity figures are not attributed to paid advertising. ### How did Michael Preuss market a technical infrastructure product at Blaxel? I made Blaxel's product concrete through technical customer stories, companion GitHub cookbooks, positioning articles and launch writing. The stories explained the customer's architecture; the cookbooks gave developers smaller examples they could inspect and run. I connected that work with paid acquisition and led the rebrand direction. ### Where can I read about the individual Blaxel projects? The Blaxel deep dives cover [Paid Growth & Measurement](/work/blaxel/blaxel-paid-growth-and-measurement), [Customer Stories & Cookbooks](/work/blaxel/blaxel-customer-stories-and-cookbooks), [Positioning & Brand](/work/blaxel/blaxel-positioning-and-brand), [Product Launches](/work/blaxel/blaxel-product-launches) and [AI Marketing Systems](/work/blaxel/blaxel-ai-marketing-systems). ## Page details - Description: Growth and marketing at Blaxel: paid acquisition, technical customer stories, runnable cookbooks, positioning and launches for usage-based AI infrastructure. - Timeframe: Joined June 2026 - Company: Blaxel - Role: Head of Growth & Marketing